


I Am Trying Very Hard to Be Here

by Riesx



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riesx/pseuds/Riesx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens in the in-between?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Am Trying Very Hard to Be Here

**Author's Note:**

> I had a few ideas after "Goodbye, Stranger" that I just had to go back to. Filling in some scenes here and there. This is just the first...there are many more chapters coming! Enjoy my random drabbles, loves!

This is the way it ends for Castiel.  
  
Not with a bang, but a whimper.  
  
A small, keening cry escapes the lips of the 50th Dean he has been forced to kill and it all but bowls him over.   
  
Naomi emerges from the shadows as he gently takes this fake Dean (this…this mockery) in his arms and lowers them both to the warehouse floor. The tiles are cold and unforgiving under his thin slacks that have somehow escaped being stained by the never-ending blood and bile.  
  
He should be wading in gore by now.  
  
She cleans him up every time.  
  
“Castiel, that was excellent. Almost no hesitation, yet---”  
  
He waits for it. The thing he did wrong. The mistake he must amend. Her voice is a tinny grating in his mind and all he wants to do is bow his head and hold the man he loves and pretend he cannot feel.  
  
Angels make wonderful psychiatrists. They know just how precisely to break each other down. She hovers and sighs deeply, compelling him to meet her eyes.  
  
“I  don’t. I, I….” _I can’t remember how he smells_ , Castiel thinks. _I am forgetting him piece by piece_.   
  
Each killing is a small crucifixion of his soul. Every step they take down this road breaks off a jagged part of his heart that he swallows.   
  
What is he now? Bitter tears….a hollow vessel.  
  
Without Dean, what is there to fill him up?  
  
“Castiel!” This time, it is more than annoyance in her tone. She has almost lost patience.  
  
He conjures the right word to say, “Again.”  
  
“Yes, my dear. Once more.” Naomi is a blue dot in his hazy vision. “As many times as necessary.”  
  
He stands. He does not risk a glance at the Dean ( _no, the **thing. Remember** this, Cas_.).   
  
Silver blade retrieved and ready. He will do this and more. However many it takes, he will pay his penance to the very centime. Although, he does not think he shall ever be forgiven.   
  
Not fully.  
  
Dean would understand.   
  



	2. Even the Stars Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet moment. When do the Winchesters ever have those? (Spoilers for 8.1 on)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set around "Hunter Heroci". My little stab at mush. I have too many thoughts. Enjoy!

“Cas, man…you okay over there?”  
  
Dean Winchester sits on the rock of a motel bed, that feels like the difference between a firm pillow and the world’s hardest stone, cleaning his gun and pondering why the angel has not spoken a word in the last hour. Not that Castiel has ever been the most verbose, but…it’s...odd. Even for him. It worries Dean more than he’s comfortable expressing. He’s been walking the line of scared down to his bones  ever since, well…  
  
Since his best friend told him he was thinking of offing himself.  
  
Castiel is silently staring out the first floor window and Dean casually glances over, noticing that he’s listening to Sam's iPod. _Huh, it probably calms him, Sammy’s probably got a lot of opera and Backstreet Boys on that thing_.  
  
Speaking of Sam, he has been in the bathroom for awhile….brushing his teeth twenty times or flossing his butt crack or whatever he does that always takes _forfuckingever_. They left for dinner, what….two hours ago?…and Cas has been at the same damn scarred table, holding the same damn pose, like the world’s most patient model.  
  
Curiousity overtakes Dean, as it always does, and most likely always will. He rises and crosses the two feet to sit at the other wooden chair, facing the angel and putting a fingertip on his wrist. Lightly, just to let him know he is there. It’s their private symbol from Purgatory, where at some moments, the slightest sound could give them away to the monsters. Castiel smiles wanly at the rare delicate touch, pulls his gaze away from the scenery and latches on to Dean with eyes so blue, he believes he would willingly drown in them.  
  
“Dean.” Softly. Like a prayer or the thing he is most fond of in the world….  
  
That is how he says the hunter’s name now.  
  
Dean catches his breath. The sinking sun makes a nimbus of red and orange and gold around Cas’ hair and it’s as if his whole head is aflame. An eerie halo of fire that will soon be extinguished by the night, by all the darkness between dusk and dawn.  
  
Castiel is purring. At least, that’s what it sounds like to Dean, who is allergic to cats, but likes them nonetheless. Okay, maybe he's a little afraid of them too, but c'mon...the claws and...the freakin' fangs....  
  
“Hey, what are you listening to?” He can’t think of anything better to say, all his thoughts flown up and out. “Opera? The Stones…please, tell me it’s not N’Sync, dude.”  
  
“No,” Cas takes the earbud out of his left ear and holds it out to Dean. “Listen. I am finally beginning to understand what people mean by…“this song ‘gets me’”.  
  
Dean takes the bud and sticks it in his own ear, now realizing how near they are to each other. How, if he really wanted to (and he does….), he could kiss this angel. Breathe a little of him into his soul. He listens, and it is clear now that Cas was humming along to the song.  
  
 **< I won’t give up on us. Even if the skies get rough…>**  
  
 _Holy shit and hellfire, is he telling me how he feels through a song?_ Dean makes to move away, cheeks reddening as if he has just been asked to senior prom by the universe’s nerdiest angel.  
  
Dean does not do romantic, even as much as he does not do cheesy.  
  
“Dean…” With one word, Castiel throws out his net and puts Dean back in his place. He gulps down the fear and confusion. “Just listen. Please.”  
  
He does.  He closes his eyes and focuses on the music, the song that Castiel has had on replay for two hours. The lyrics have no meaning, yet mean everything. Angel humming blurs into purring into a hazy half-sleep and Dean is as calm as he’s been since his soul mate has returned to him.  
  
Ever since the grays of Purgatory became the blinding, consuming colors of Earth.  
  
Dean hasn’t understood how blind he’s been until now.  
  
Thirty minutes later, Sam Winchester exits the bathroom, toothbrush dangling from his mouth and takes in the scene before him. The sun is setting, almost gone now, and his brother and _his_ angel are sitting _thisclose_ , thighs touching, holding hands or near enough to it to matter…sharing freaking earbuds like a _couple_.  
  
They both look so….happy and…  
  
…serene.  
  
 Sam bites his toothbrush around a grin so wide it threatens to break his face. Slowly, he returns to the bathroom, shutting the door as silently as he can.  
  
Sam mentally pats himself on the back. Yeah, giving Castiel his iPod and suggesting ever so subtly to listen to that song on replay….Best. Idea. **Ever**.  
  
He turns the water on and decides to take an extra long shower.  
  
They at least deserve that.  
  
 **< ‘Cause even the stars they burn. Some even fall to the earth. We’ve got a lot to learn. God knows we’re worth it. No, I won’t give up.>**


	3. Interlude, the First: Anna

The angels are talking again.  
  
Not to her, not directly, but she is intercepting their frequency again. The third time in two months and it is almost too much. Loud and guttural this language like a condensed  Hebrew a lyrical Latin a sharp pain in her brain. It burrows and festers and rots her thoughts and she places her hot brow on the cold tile of the bathroom floor almost a _thumpthumpthump_ not hard enough to concuss not dull enough to not hurt but what is her life nowadays if not that the angels and their voices and what must it be like to hear them sing their Hallelujahs? Probably like a cancer the one she has now and where is the cure what must she do except things to her fragile human body that have nothing to do with her mind but they are connected the same nonetheless.  
  
A blinding white light and she can see where they are headed a body a host a garrison of celestial intent. It is hot and so cold it burns like flame and there is no direction none that she can determine anyway because Heaven is not up and Hell is not down these are places that live in the heart and only the soul can travel to and she does not want to go to either not now not ever and why is she living this nightmare?  
  
They are going to save someone something righteous and she is not exactly sure but they are carving a path a swath a blazing focused attack to reach this thing this person she cannot see only hear their orders and their pain screams of the Suffering they must cut and blind and their own numbers falling and failing and there are not many left this mission a suicide one at best and what better place for them to be?  
  
This is how.  
  
This is how angels.  
  
This is how angels kill.  
  
Shut them out turn it off she can’t and a streak of all the colors in the spectrum and beyond he is so beautiful and fearsome and he is taking up the sword of his brother and decimating there is no other word because he has seen the thing they have come for have been ordered to save and there is not a word in any language to describe what happens next. She can feel it the meeting and matching and flaring of soul mates finding each other  and the hand he places and how it sears their will be a scar but it will also be a token of their bond one she can see was born the moment he was in the womb and how can they be corporeal it’s just not possible but one of them is falling and both of them are rising with the pull of an angel’s will and might and it is over almost before it began.  
  
She comes into her own body. Her hair is growing back after the last incident the one where she plucked one strand at a time thinking pain was the answer, this schizophrenia her curse.  
  
Anna doesn’t understand why she can hear the angels. She doesn’t know a lot of things except that life can be a hell of one’s own making and now that a bit of Heaven can be found in Hell.  
  
The sharp silver razor blade _clinkclinkclinks_ in the bathroom sink and her own bright blood _dripdripdrip_ drops from her slit wrists slower than she’d like. It’s done and all before she’s just begun she’ll end her story and almost regrets seeing the beginning of theirs. If she was a stronger person it would give her hope and she falls not from grace but from weakness.  
  
This is how angels die.  
  
This is how angels.  
  
This is how.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never really liked the character of Anna. Just a depressing stream-of-consciousness writing exercise to sympathize, I guess!


	4. Never So Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words left unspoken, futures still unwritten. Places Castiel chooses to go. Set immediately after "Goodbye, Stranger".

_She has too many holes in her face_. This is the first thing he thinks as he approaches the young woman in the graveyard. Teenager still, to be precise, but she wears her skin like she’s been living in it forty years and then some. He should know. He’s worn her before.  
  
“Hello, Claire.”  
  
He tries to keep his voice even, and it has been a few tones softer ever since Purgatory, so as not to startle her. He’s come at her sideways (out of the underground with a stone tablet in his gut…an unspoken love in his soul), but she still jumps a little. Calms her face quickly, just as she quiets the jangling nerves he’s heard from miles away.  
  
“Shit, Da--Castiel. Give a girl some warning will you?”  
  
Claire Novak hasn’t seen the angel who wears her father’s face for a few years now. The graveyard they are presently standing in isn’t quite the place she imagined they’d meet again, but hey, beggars and all that.  
  
“I am sorry, but I heard your prayer and came as quickly as I could.” Castiel looks down at the small plaque at her feet and suddenly regrets coming. An emotion he cannot name rushes to him as solid as a punch to the gut.  
  
 **James Novak**  
 **Beloved**  
 **1976-2008**  
 **With the Angels Now**  
  
“Yeah, Mom had you declared dead---officially---after all that demon stuff. Well, not you….my dad. Jimmy.”  
  
“I….I’m not---”  
  
“I know, I know…” If anyone has mastered the tone of impertinence, it is a 17-year old girl with a ring through her lower lip and a stud in her nose. “You’re..not my father.” The sideways glance she shoots his way echoes with the sound of I need your concern like a hole in the head.  And he could see that as funny, considering the collection she presently sports.  
  
“I’m not sure what to say, Claire. Did you not pray to me just now?”  
  
“No…God, I think I was cursing your name or something. I’ve been thinking a lot lately. It probably came out wrong.”  
  
And Castiel wonders how he could’ve mistaken a damnation for a prayer. He must be falling faster than he thought. “Well, I am here now. How…are you, Claire?”  
  
She snorts, “Since my mother was possessed by a demon and my long lost father decides that giving his body to an angel to ride around in for all time is, like, the best idea ever? Gee, figure it out.”  
  
“I hope you are well. I can’t not. You are of my chosen bloodline. Even though there is no love lost between us.” Since Castiel has gotten better at using human phrases, he wishes they could understand angelic thought, just once, “I only have the best hopes for you and your future.”  
  
“Shit, could you sound less like a graduation speech?!”   
  
And then there is a silence between them that could span all of time. The snow falls faster and his mind sifts deeper, searching for what little connection, if any, that has brought him here. He has been in a state of flux since boarding an out of town bus and leaving Dean behind. There might have been a purpose to his wanderings, but he must admit that all that has been abandoned. Like most things, however, the truth must find light through the cracks in the world.   
  
Claire snorts again. A quiet gesture that is almost too subtle for his angelic hearing to catch. She rolls up her sleeve and shows him the thin white lines, the silent screams that she has taken out on her body. “I did this for awhile. Cut myself.” A small amount of shame creeps into her voice.  
  
“Why--”  
  
“Don’t know why.” Sleeve covers pain again. She looks him in the eyes, searching for something, the man that he once was, perhaps. “Maybe because he was gone.”  
  
He can relate to her statement. Castiel knows of a love that was and can never be again. “What are you going to do with your life, Claire?”  
  
Her nose wrinkles and the silver stud with it. Castiel cannot quite grasp this piercing trend, but sees the hidden beauty her face tries to hide. “Be a hunter. Or go to culinary school. It’s still up in the air.”  
  
“You have the characteristics of a hunter. Great instincts and such.” And he sees it in her, the part of her that will never back down from a fight. The unwillingness to tolerate untruths and a strong spirit that could see her standing whole from the afterlife and back. Much like one Dean Winchester.   
  
“Thanks, Castiel.”  
  
“You are welcome, Claire.”  
  
“And, Dad?” She says it sarcastically, but he thinks it is her sad way of being able to verbalize their true connection one final time.  
  
“Yes?”   
  
“If I ever see your face around here again….you won’t have one. Got me?” She walks away, small footprints leaving faint tracks that fill up with snow dust. Jimmy Novak’s gravestone becomes as covered and lonely as a sentinel.   
  
No, he won’t come back here. Not for her. Not for himself. Not for anything.   
  
But he’s glad he can hear her call.   
  
An Angel of the Lord vanishes into the thin air and she never looks back.   
  
Never sees the empty space between his endings and her new beginning.   
  
Her scars have never felt so invisible, her steps never so light.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wondered what has become of the remaining Novak family, Claire especially. This could be more polished and I apologise about the long timespan between chapters. :)


End file.
